The present invention relates to vibration monitoring and analysis for electric mining shovels. Two conventional types of vibration monitoring and analysis on mining machines include manual testing and primitive operational monitoring. Manual testing involved placing mining machines off-line and interrupting regular mining operations. Then, personnel would secure one or two vibration sensors on or near one or more moving components of the to-be-analyzed mining machine. The personnel would then instruct the operator of the mining machine to operate the mining machine in a particular way in order to capture vibration data. Thereafter, the captured data would be analyzed for diagnostic purposes. Manual testing was a labor intensive activity that required a high level of expertise for placement of vibration data sensors, vibration data collection, and vibration data analysis. Additionally, manual testing required interruption of mining operations for several hours. Primitive operational monitoring involved installing a vibration monitor for capture of vibration data during operation of the mining machine. The capture of vibration data was initiated based on two factors, motor speed and motor rotation direction. The capture of vibration data was not based on the shovel's operating cycle, but rather simply motor speed and rotational direction. This technique resulted not only in inefficient and inconsistent data capture, but collected vibration data that was difficult to analyze.